Accounting requirements in contemporary society are pervasive. The financial sophistication of commercial and private life requires that accounting records of all types be created and maintained. Records of goods and services supplied and received are essential to follow the progress of commerce. Inventory and asset records must be maintained to establish the value of business and private holdings. And, records of income and expense must be created to prepare and file the numerous and varied tax returns compelled by government. It is difficult to imagine how individuals, corporations or other entities could make financial sense of their affairs without the use of accounting data.
Still further, the problem of creating and maintaining this ever increasing amount of financial information is aggravated by the need for absolute accuracy in the records produced. Where money is concerned, not only must the volume of information be handled, but also, its accuracy must be assured to avoid financial loss. Experience has shown a true picture of an entity's financial condition is essential to its successful management and operation.
Faced with these needs for information handling capacity and accuracy, accountants were among the first to turn to computers and data processing methods for assistance in solving their problems. And, in response to the requests of the accounting community, the computer and data processing industry has provided a continuing evolution of hardware and software products to meet accountants' needs. Historically, computer systems initially proposed to handle the demands of accounting applications featured complex, centralized facilities owned or leased by the user. These facilities included numerous key-punch operators and associated equipment for coding financial records onto cards that were subsequently batch processed by large, mainframe computers.
However, in time, large, centralized key-punch and batch processing operations became excessively costly to operate and were found prone to error. Specifically, the expense of owning or leasing the centralized computer resources necessary for handling accounting applications became prohibitive and the disassociation of the key-punch personnel from the record-originating site led to errors and delay in coding. Accordingly, to reduce costs and improve accuracy, accountants shifted from centralized systems to more cost effective distributed systems that featured use of remote terminals coupled to a large, time-shared host computer. With the distributed processing approach costs are reduced since computing resources are paid for only as used, and accuracy is improved by locating the data-entry points closer to the record-originating sites.
In such systems, accounting records are typically supplied; i.e., uploaded, from the terminal to the host databases by means of interactive screens the host presents to the user terminal once the terminal is logged onto the system. The interactive screens commonly contain fixed forms that query the terminal operator for entry of the accounting data at designated fields on the screens. In this arrangement, host and terminal operation is facilitated by software resident at the host and terminal that constitutes an accounting system having one or more modules such as a general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory and fixed assets. The various modules are coordinated through a series of related databases resident at the host that are periodically updated with accounting data uploaded from the terminal. An example of such a software accounting package is the Millennium.RTM. System offered by Dun & Bradstreet Software Services, Inc.
The interactive-screen approach of such systems was originally proposed to improve accuracy. It was felt that by carefully guiding the operator through the data-entry process with screen prompts and messages, errors could be avoided and, accordingly, operating costs reduced. Regrettably, however, problems have been experienced. While screen prompts can be helpful, it has been found that accuracy is adversely affected by requiring operators to transcribe data from prepared entry forms to the interactive screens. Specifically, operators tend to make errors in transferring data from the entry forms, which are commonly handwritten, to the numerous field spaces of the interactive screens. Further, in addition to the tendency for error, operator entry of the data from the forms to the screen fields is time-consuming, thus aggravating operating costs.
While Dun & Bradstreet Software Services, Inc. has offered companion software entitled PC Link.RTM. that includes batching procedures to improve the data uploading efficiency of its Millennium System, still time and accuracy difficulties remain. Specifically, though the PC Link software enables spreadsheet files containing accounting data to be uploaded to the Millennium host databases without need for operator entry of each data record to an interactive-screen field, the PC Link procedures require creation of special formatting files, manual designation of field fill and restrictions on the spreadsheet input files, all of which serve to restrict the speed and accuracy with which data can be uploaded.